Is it true that Catholic Answers Forum is closing?

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Rozellelily

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Hello everyone,

Just now as I went to the CAF page via google, I received a message stating that CAF will be closing at the end of this month.
I live in Australia, and today is the first time I have see this message -perhaps others already knew about this?

If this is true, I find it really sad.

I also find the statement:

“Because Catholic Answers has limited resources, we are always evaluating our programs to determine if they provide a good return on investment”

very concerning.
Of course, no organization can support/sustain a forum if they literally do not have the money. But the way it is worded “return on investment” is what I find very concerning.

Should Catholic things be viewed through a corporate business model this way?

How exactly do the CAF board members measure the “return on investment”?

Is it measured through having a Catholic presence in “the world” (i.e., the internet is a huge part of peoples lives these days)?
  • is ROI measured on the Christian social support, company, interaction and kindness that people give each other on CAF?
  • is ROI measured on information sharing on CAF about the Catholic Faith (i.e, evangelism)?
  • is it measured according to how many people have decided to become Catholic through the presence of CAF?
…or is it measured according to money?

ROI usually refers to money.

I am concerned that the closure is not due to literally having no finances to sustain the forums, but rather that it is not producing “financial fruit”.

How sad that such a beautiful witness to the Catholic faith is being shut down for not “providing a good ROI”.

How can this corporate mentality be compatible with Catholic values-
has corporate mentality seeped into Catholic organizations now also?
Are Catholic values being pushed out…of even Catholic organizations… in favour of worshipping mammon? ☹️

How sad, that instead of a simple Catholic presence, with simple catholic values, simple honest Catholic families and priests, the forums have become a corporation with an executive board, etc?

Is this a Catholic organization or is it Telstra?
(for those outside of Australia who don’t know what Telstra is, it’s our prime telecommunications corporation in Australia, known for paying their wealthy execs ridiculously high pay packets, and giving fancy gold watches as bonuses).

What is the end goal, a good return on investment, or Catholic values?
 
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First of all a Forum like this one uses resources that someone has to pay for.
Get yourself an Internet Host, pay for the monthly fee and the Bandwidth that the users traffic generate not to mention that maintenance on the server side is also required. Patches, Security Updates, Hacking Attempts, etc. Then have staff monitor the forum for moderation, although some moderation is outsourced to some of the members who do it for free.
When it is all said and done see how much this little forum will cost PER MONTH.
Catholic Answers is an Apostolate that runs on DONATIONS exclusively so they have to divert some resources to run the forums.
It is not the first time that they have had financial struggles, in the end they have to be good stewards of the funds they receive and if they are insufficient to run all the activities they currently support sometimes CUTS have to be made.
Yes it is unfortunate but this is LIFE.
ROI does not mean that someone is making a profit by the way. It only means that funds have to be allocated were they do the most good. IF they are available.
CA is a Non Profit.

Peace!
 
Rozellelily said:
What is the end goal, a good return on investment, or Catholic values?
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I’ll add to the other commenter that at least in its barely moderated state, CAF hardly promotes “Catholic values”.

Confusion and contention are as prominent here as any truth and charity that manages to get mixed in. Users regularly report that interacting on this site damages their faith, instead of helping it.

Other online communities manage this better. Catholic Answers has made the right choice to focus on their apologetics ministry (which they do excellently). CAF users will find other online communities to be a part of (hopefully less compromised and contentious communities).
 
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Beware that one… It has no Admin. Thus, it’s susceptible to being overrun.
 
JerryZ said:
Get yourself an Internet Host, pay for the monthly fee and the Bandwidth that the users traffic generate not to mention that maintenance on the server side is also required. Patches, Security Updates, Hacking Attempts, etc.
Click to expand...
Discourse takes care of most of that depending on your monthly plan.
JerryZ said:
although some moderation is outsourced to some of the members who do it for free.
Click to expand...
They did away with that here. It did exist on the Old CAF though.
JerryZ said:
When it is all said and done see how much this little forum will cost PER MONTH.
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With Discourse, it could be as little as $100/month! They obviously weren’t using the cheapest plan. I suspect most of the cost was in maintaining the tremendous amount of posts indefinitely. Storage is expensive.
 
Definitely see if it can be brought under control. Somebody needs to find the admin or start another free forum.
 
Cruciferi said:
or start another free forum.
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I mentioned to HomeSchoolDad that I have a Premium membership at Delphi and can set up a forum for us there should the need arise. I already host two private forums for family and friends so there would be no cost to me in creating another one. The only problem there would be monitoring it since I don’t normally use the computer on a daily basis. But something could be worked out with a few volunteer assistants. Let’s see how things go at this other one first, though. 🙂
 
JerryZ said:
First of all a Forum like this one uses resources that someone has to pay for.
Click to expand...
There are 226194 users of CAF. Assuming that each user stays on, a small monthly or annual subscription price should cover the CAF costs and bring in a tidy profit. For example, a monthly charge of $5 would bring in $1, 130, 970 per month. That is a lot of money. Even an incredibly minimum low charge of $10 per year would bring in $2,261,940 per year.
 
Rozellelily said:
What is the end goal, a good return on investment, or Catholic values?
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Catholic Answers is a nonprofit so return on investment is not measured in money but rather in souls reached. This forum is much smaller than it used to be and many noble efforts to beef it up have failed to attract enough users to justify the ongoing expenses, whether measured in time, talent or treasure.
 
I completely agree with you if operations costs are the real and only issue.
However, the fact that there is an executive board, it would be good for transparencies sake to know how much they are being paid.

I don’t want to make any presumptions and I don’t know if this is the case here with CAF, but I do know that, generally speaking, with many companies/organizations that claim to find that they are unable to sustain their business in some way, either close off segments of the business or let go of the “low hanging fruit” (i.e., the little staff), but yet they still somehow manage to pay their execs big salaries. Hmm….

I run a business with a website fees, hosting, hacking prevention etc. It is not that expensive but it is not a forum so I can appreciate that the operational cost may be different. There are members willing to moderate for free as you mentioned, so that takes care of that. All that’s left is website operational costs.

I understand it’s a non-profit, but sometimes non profits can pay board members huge salaries, which are corporate-model based and not in line with Catholic values.
 
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What’s the difference here between “users” and “active users”?
 
MNathaniel said:
Users regularly report that interacting on this site damages their faith,
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Is this though because there is something stated that is actually contrary to what the Catholic Church teaches, or is it rather that their faith was not built on a solid foundation in the first place?
I.e., there are some that view Catholic Church as like some rigid “sports club” and are loyal to their long-term membership, and any open discussion of topics may feel threatening to them, even though the discussions themselves arn’t problematic, but can feel threatening if a person doesn’t know why they believe what they believe etc (I hope that makes sense).
 
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